


the furthest limit

by saintsurvivor



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, BAMF Roxy Morton, F/M, Gen, Gun Violence, Interrogation, Italian Mafia, Kidnapping, Mission Fic, Moral Ambiguity, Organized Crime, POV Roxy Morton, Panic Attacks, Post-Kingsman: The Secret Service, Rescue Missions, Roxy Morton has Panic Attacks, Spies & Secret Agents, Victoria Winslow is Arthur, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-12 16:51:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13551564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintsurvivor/pseuds/saintsurvivor
Summary: March 2018. On what should have been a routine mission in Italy, Eggsy Unwin goes missing.





	1. WOMAN-KINGS

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladyiszy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyiszy/gifts).



> **Author's Note #1** : I'm back in Reggsy Heaven and it's absolutely Izzy's fault.  
>  **Author's Note #2** : _The Furthest Limit_ is kind of my love story to BAMF Roxy and how bad ass she is. Furthermore, _The Furthest Limit_ can be classed as an ambiguous relationship for Roxy and Eggsy for whoever wants to read it as either platonic or romantic. I don't care which, though I personally read this as romantic.  
>  **Author's Note #3** : This is going to be a mission-based, POV-Roxy fic, with Roxy's limited point of view. Roxy is, of course, going to miss things, and has her own take on things, which is why I love limited POV's, you've got such an interesting dynamic with it.  
>  **Author's Note #4** : You can also find me at [saintsurvivor](http://www.saintsurvivor.tumblr.com) if you have questions or prompts or anything else.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a moment, she thinks of her read but unanswered email to Eggsy, and feels something bitter slide down her throat.

_consume me / carry me to the furthest limit._

— **Virginia Woolf** , from “ _T_ _he Waves,_ ”

 

Her motel room is dark, barely illuminated by the neon glow of the gas stations _OPEN_ sign that’s just at both her eye level and floor level. It casts blue and green neon lights across her room, slits of light thrown against the walls and floor from the tweaked open blinds.

Roxy’s sitting on the left bed, the bed nearest the door. She won’t deny that it’s strange, being on a mission without her usual partner. It leaves her feeling almost lopsided without Eggsy lounging on the floor, clearing his guns or knives. She’d automatically ordered a twin room, and knows she should really break herself out of that habit before it makes her sloppy.

At least it’s a good diversion for people looking for her.

She and Eggsy, they don’t always do missions together, Kingsman’s requirements making it mandatory that they’re proficient in solo, duo and team missions, but Roxy won’t lie to herself by saying that she doesn’t enjoy partnering with Eggsy for missions.

It keeps them both human, and it’s always better to have someone with you on long term undercover missions. She and Eggsy have done several of them, and everytime she feels she’s going to lose both herself and Eggsy, they’ve anchored one another.

To distract herself, she glances back down at the newest mission file Kingsman sent to her phone and laptop. She squints at the screen, the neon lights falling across it as the wind rattles the blinds against the glass of the open window.

Lafayette, Louisiana is sauna hot, even as April ends and March slots smoothly in. Roxy _hates_ it, can’t stand it and can’t wait to be gone. She’s tanned twenty shades darker than normal, hair lighter than her usual brown from the blinding sun.

She won’t be here for much longer, hopefully . She’s done her job in Lafayette, which included taking down the head of a child trafficking ring and the rest of her lackeys that had infiltrated the southern county’s government bench. She’d felt particularly vindictive in taking down the Right of the Storm and not just in the least because of their stupid name. She’s already got a new mission signed off, somewhere in the Austrian Alps, she’s looking forward to the cold.

She grins, closes the tab of her completed mission, pulls up her emails. She opens the message from Amelia, snorting at the cat meme the R&D agent had sent her. She frowns a little when she notices that Eggsy’s opened her email message, sent twenty hours before, but hasn’t replied. It’s unusual, Eggsy’s usually prompt with replying, whether through email or on their personal phones, but she knows he’s on a mission; it’s probably nothing.

She frowns again as she sees a message pop up on the laptop screen, marked _urgent._   Taking a swig of water from the water bottle on her bedside, she shoves her glasses on, and taps the message.

To her surprise, Arthur’s face emerges, Merlin standing besides her. Both of their faces are blank, but Roxy still feels something sink in her belly.

Since the debacle of Chester King and several other Knight’s betrayal only a few years ago in what was now universally known as V-DAY, Merlin had been next in line for the ascension to Arthur, especially after Harry Hart - the then Galahad - had been killed by Valentine in the line of duty, his body having been flown back to Britain several weeks later by the Statesmen with their sincerest apologies. Merlin had refused the position emphatically, stating that he was comfortable where he was as Quartermaster and head of R&D, and had no - and would never _have_ any-  ambition to actually lead Kingsman.

Thus, did enter Victoria Winslow; a hard as nails former MI6 agent who Merlin, it turned out, used to work under with the pair of them having been MI6 wetwork operatives, back in the day. With Victoria’s unquestioned ascension as King, Kingsman had been in a perpetual state of shock and limbo for the last year as she’d overhauled the entire agency to her strict standards and made sure they _stayed_ there.

They’d discovered they’d had more rats than what they’d ever thought and it was only Arthur’s ruthless efficiency and brutality that had flushed them all out. Roxy had been half in love ever since.

“ _Lancelot,_ ” Arthur says, and her voice is as flat as her face is blank.

“Arthur,” She says, nodding her head. She turns her eyes to Merlin. “Merlin,”

“ _Alright, lass_?” Merlin says, leans forward a little, hand on the back of Arthur’s chair. Arthur doesn’t say anything, just gives a small quirk of her lips that looks like it could have been a smile.

Roxy knows that if it was anyone else, her and Merlin would have been reprimanded, but Arthur makes a small exception for her, Merlin and Eggsy. Arthur had, after all, been the one who’d had to read the reports on the V-DAY incident and, even more so in Arthur’s own experiences, had know that people forge bonds deeper than blood, especially in such a terrible situation.

“Yeah, never better, how’s everything over there?” She watches carefully as Merlin’s face spasms, and Arthur’s eyes tighten, just a little. She’s surprised.

Arthur and Merlin have the most control over their facial expressions that Roxy’s ever seen, including her father and the other Knights. Her own face tightens, and she bites at the tip of her tongue. Something’s wrong and she gets the idea that she’s not going to like what it is Arthur and Merlin have got to say.

“ _That’s what we contacted you about_ ,” Arthur says, and if Roxy didn’t know better, she’d say Arthur’s tone was _reluctant_. She watches as Merlin types something on his tablet, glasses flashing in the lighting back at HQ. “ _I’m sending you some files, Lancelot, read through them,”_

“Okay,” She says, slowly. She clicks on the files that have come up on her phone, something bubbling in her gut she can’t quite name. She’s aware of Arthur and Merlin watching her, closely. She looks up as the blinds clatter against the window again, air conditioner chugging away but still ineffective.

She speedreads through the mission files, about an Italian crime family dipping their hands in human trafficking, with no clear signs of how they got involved and what they’re doing to the poor bastards they end up grabbing, makes note of the head of the Family, how they run weapons and drugs on the side.

“I don’t understand,” She says, looking up from her phone. Arthur is watching her closely, something icy in her face that makes Roxy’s instincts sit up and urge her to grab her guns. She leans forward slightly, tucks her hand around her TT-30, thumbs the safety off.

“ _Lancelot_ …,” Merlin pauses, swallows. She frowns at them both. Merlin is many things, Roxy knows, but he is never one to be this hesitant nor as cautious as he’s being at the moment.

“What’s happened?” She demands, feeling her stomach clench, her muscles relaxing even as her heart pounds. On screen, behind his glasses, Merlin’s eyes close.

“ _Watch yourself, Lancelot,_ ” Arthur says silkily. Roxy nods jerkily, wrenching her eyes from Arthur’s suddenly dagger sharp smile. Roxy may admire Arthur, but that just makes her all the more aware of how dangerous she truly is. Still, Roxy doesn't apologise.

" _T_ _his was Agent Galahad’s mission_ ,” Arthur says, and her smile is flat again, and her eyes are too, flat and shark like. “ _He was due for a check in twenty four hours ago, and we haven’t heard anything from him since then,”_

Roxy, if asked, will never admit that her breath left her in one fell swoop, will never admit that it felt like a gun had gone off right by her ear, trigger kick back, gut wound sore, sending her ears ringing, eyes fluttering as if she can see the muzzle flash.

“Shit,” She hisses, instead of all the ways she wants to rage, wants to throw the laptop out of the cracked open window, instead of blowing holes in everyone who _lost her partner._ “ _S_ _hit_ ,”

“ _I_ _ntelligence shows that he was in the middle of Naples, the Piazza Del Gesu in fact, deep in Camorra territory; his last sitrep in twenty four hours before his missed check in shows that he’d found a possible lead about what the_ _Avvoltoi_ _were doing to their captives,”_

“Vultures,” Roxy murmurs beneath her breath, eyes stuck on the sitrep Eggsy had sent in forty eight hours before, brief and to the point. A skill that had almost beaten into him but Merlin after too many crap reports Merlin had had to sieve through. For a moment, she thinks of her read but unanswered email to Eggsy, and feels something bitter slide down her throat.

“When did he go missing?” She asks. She watches Arthur and Merlin exchanges glances.

“ _We’re not entirely sure of the exact time,_ ” Merlin says. “ _O_ _nly that between his last check in, forty eight hours, he sent in his report, made contact with his handler four hours after and then went dark,_ ”

“I sent an email to him,” Roxy says, watches how Merlin straightens. “It says it was opened. I don’t know if it was actually read, but it hasn’t been replied too. That’s unusual for Galahad, you know it is,”

“ _When did you send the email?”_ Merlin asks.

“0200 my local time, just before I started stakeout,” Roxy says, then bites her lip. “I just checked and it was opened opened at 1630 my local time,”

“He hasn’t just gone off grid?” She has to ask, tries not to ask desperately, wants to fan the embers of hope she feels in her belly even if she _knows_ better. There’s no use for something like hope in the business of international spies and assassinations, but this is _Eggsy_.

She and Eggsy have stuck together through thick and thin since being recruits together, have gone on countless missions together, survived _V-DAY_ together. She’d always known they’d die, would run out of luck, but always thought it would be Butch and Sundance style, _together_ or not at all.

“Especially with the Camorra in the area, if the Avvoltoi is trying to crash in on their territory?”

Arthur shakes her head, french plait settling across her broad shoulders. “ _From what we can piece together from Galahad’s notes, the Avvoltoi is a subclan of the Camorra, stationed primarily in the inner part of Naples, operating mainly from Piazza Del Gesu,”_

“Shit,” She says. “So it’s definitely not inter-family disputes, with the Avvoltoi trying to gain a foothold in the community?”

“ _We thought it might have been_ ,” Merlin cuts in, leans a little closer to the screen. The neon loom of the gas station sign just outside her window makes his face foggy, even more so as the sun breaches the horizon. “ _But it seems Galahad managed to connect the Avvoltoi to the head of the Camorra, with the Don having signed off on the action, unfortunately they’re practically untouchable in Naples,  even with the Overseas Security Advisory Council,”_

 _“Useless bastards_ ,” Merlin muttered beneath his breath, and Roxy gives a startled laugh. Arthur shoots him a dry look.

“What is it you want me to do then?” She says, because this is all well and good, but she doesn’t know why they’re giving her Eggsy’s sitrep of his mission, unless-

“ _We want you to go in and retrieve him, and gather more information on the Avvoltoi,”_ Arthur says, blunt as always.

Roxy can’t deny the shiver of satisfaction that goes up and down her spine. Eggsy is _hers_ , and if Arthur had thought of sending another Knight on his exfil mission, Roxy might have just mutinied.

“ _Y_ _ou’ve been his partner more than anyone else in Kingsman, you know how he thinks, how he moves. You’re the best Knight for the job, Lancelot and-_ ,”

Here, Arthur sends her a dryer look than what she sent Merlin, but there’s something like amusement etched into her face.

“ _I_ _also know that you’d have gone off grid to try and find Galahad anyway, and then we’d have two Knights missing_ ,”

“I can’t deny anything,” Roxy says, and she sees the laughter in Merlin’s eyes before he turns them to his tablet.

Arthur rolls her eyes, doesn’t deign to comment. Instead, she says;

“ _We’ve chartered a plane for you at Lafayette Regional Airport, it should be touching down in three hours. We want you aboard and flying to Venice in four, where a car will be waiting for you to drive to Naples, I’ll send you more updates enroute, check in will be in ten hours, clear?”_

“Crystal, sir,” She says, already up from the bed, strapping her shoulder holsters into place. The sun finally breaches the horizon, illuminating her motel room in golds and oranges, and Roxy grins, bares her teeth, blood on the wind.

“ _And Lancelot?”_ It’s Merlin, this time. His voice is softer than Roxy’s ever heard.

“Merlin,” Roxy says, and she stops for a moment, mid motion of pulling on her customary black leather gloves.

“ _Be safe and-,”_ He hesitates, swallows, brows furrowing. “ _Bring him home,”_

Roxy grins, and she knows there’s nothing nice about it. “Eggsy is _mine_ , Merlin,” She tells them both, knows it’s something she shouldn’t really say, but Eggsy has always made her selfish, and Roxy has never been a saint. “I’m the only one allowed to kill him, and he _knows_ that,”

If Eggsy doesn’t, well. Roxy will just have to let him know all over again.

 

Lafayette Regional Airport is, to a man, sweaty, smelly and packed to the top of the ceiling. Roxy _hates_ it.

Thankfully, she manages to avoid the crushing crowds of the main airports by sheer virtue of the familiar Kingsman pilot standing just inside the main inside entrance of the airport, blank faced and broad shouldered, clad in Kingsman customary bulletproof suits.

“Morning, Lancelot,” The man, Addison, greets in his deep, slow voice. He’s holding several files, pinned to his side. He squints down at her through his sunglasses.

“Alright, Addison,” Roxy says, ducking her head as Addison leads her from the main crush of the airport and out a mostly ignored door. She isn’t quite sure what Kingsman did to make sure they could land on Airport grounds, but Roxy isn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. The sooner they can be in the air, the sooner she can get to Venice and be sat in the driver’s seat of the car that’s going to take her to Naples.

She brushes an absent hand over her grey suit, shouldering her dufflebag a little more securely. The reassuring weight of her TT30’s in her shoulder holsters keeps her calm as the wind bolsters her fishtail plait around her shoulders, burning sun hurting her eyes even through her sunglasses.

She can’t wait to leave Lafayette behind. She just wishes it was for a different reason.

“Merlin’s sent his compliments along the way,” Addison says, as they fall into step, hurrying to the plane. “He said to tell you that you, ah, owe him?” He sounds endlessly amused.

“Misering bastard, I’d be _dead_ and I’d _still_ owe him,” Roxy mutters beneath her breath, making Addison chuckle.

“I’ll make sure to pass on your thanks,” Addison says dryly.

“Oh, please do,” Roxy says, as she follows Addison up the creaky stairs to the sleek airplane. “I think that _everyone_ in Kingsman _owes_ him by now,” She sighs a relief as she steps into the relative coolness of the plane, feeling something settle between her shoulder blades.

“Now,” Addison says, pulling the plane door shut tight behind him. “Arthur has sent word of your destination and that an armoured car will be awaiting your arrival on the ground, she’s sent the mission files through to your tablet, and Merlin has forwarded identification papers for you,”

Addison holds out the files he’s been gripping, they’re sleek and sun warm beneath her grip as she takes them, tucking them under the opposite arm to her duffle.

“Merlin’s _compliments_ are over on the table, refreshments are in the usual place. It should take approximately ten hours travel, depending on anything going south,”

“Thanks, Addison, you’re fantastic,” Roxy says, grinning at the older man. She watches him turn on his heel, towards the cockpit, and it’s only when he’s gone from view does she drop her head backwards and sigh in relief.

She’s _sweltering_.

She’s also hoping that the ten plus hours the flight will take to Venice will go quickly. She’s just thankful she’s not flying coach; she doesn’t fancy having to take two layovers.  She’s strung tight enough to garrote somebody as it is; she doesn’t need anybody inadvertently getting on her nerves and making her cause a scene in the middle of an airport because she’s too worried and angry.

The plane vibrates beneath her feet, and she can hear the flick of buttons and the murmur of muffled voices as Addison and his copilot go through the usual preflight checks. She dumps her duffle, the sunglasses and the black files on the table closest to the front of the plane, opposite the table with various black cases, differing in sizes but all embossed with a subtle _K_ on the leather coverings.

She strips off her blazer and leather gloves, and ditches her scarlet tie, leaving her in her trousers and white button up. She’s sweating enough that she doesn’t mind rolling her sleeves up to her elbow, thankful she’s shoved her hair back into a plait. She knows it’s probably going to be even hotter in Venice and it’s not a thought she’s having pleasant feelings about.

Roxy settles herself into a seat by the window, at the table covered by the black cases. She doesn’t hesitate in pulling a long slim that looks like it could contain a rifle close to her and opening it wide

She can’t help the grin that pulls at her mouth.

“I take everything back I said about you, Merlin,” Roxy says immediately. “You can be a miser bastard all you want, she’s fucking _gorgeous_ ,” She can’t help but croon as she brushes her fingers over the _TR-42 338 LAPUA_ , navy blue with a folding gunstock.

“Oh, Eggsy is going to be so _jealous_ ,” She murmurs, knows Merlin had promised that first use of the newly customised _LAPUA_ would go to Eggsy, seeing as he’s usually the one that does long-range hits and assassinations; Roxy’s more of a _hit them where it hurts_ type of fighter. Roxy supposes it’s a small consolation that use of the sniper rifle would be going into rescuing Eggsy which would probably pacify the other agent.

She has to force herself to back away from the _LAPUA_ , pulling the files closer towards her. She takes sips from her water bottle, tucked between her outer thigh and the plane seat, her phone face up on the table. She doesn’t want to be unreachable just in case news of Eggsy reaches HQ.

She feels the vibrations as the plane takes off, takes a deep inhale through her nose. She still hates heights and flying, though ease of repetition has eased her through the majority of it. To distract herself, she pulls her tablet closer to herself.

She flips through the files on the tablet, drinks up Eggsy’s words with greedy eyes. Eggsy has always made her greedy, she knows. Roxy has never been one to lie to herself, and she isn’t going to start now. Eggsy is _hers_ , and she doesn’t take kindly to people taking what’s _hers_.

“You better still be alive, Eggsy,” Roxy vows, curls her hands into fists.“Because otherwise, I’m bringing you back just to kill you all over again,”

_but the wolf is always there /  when i can’t see it._

—— **Brianna Albers,** from “The Audre Lorde Questionnaire to Oneself,” published in _DIALOGIST_


	2. AMBUSH

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eggsy is her weak spot, and Roxy is his. It’s both something she despises and shamefully loves. To know that Eggsy would probably burn the world down for her, it’s a heedy and powerful thing, for all it makes her vulnerable.

_i can give you my loneliness / my darkness / the hunger of my heart;_

— **Jorge Luis Borges** , tr. by Paul Weinfield, from “ _In a Deserted Streetcorner,_ ”

Venice is, as Roxy expected, hot, humid, and packed, crammed to the very borders with both tourists and natives. The oppressive heat of Italy makes sweat bloom across her forehead, makes her palms damp, and it forces her to go about in just her button up, thankfully bulletproof.

Even still, it leaves Roxy unsettled and wary as she exits the jet, shoulder holsters heavy with her guns. She’d refused to swap them out for belt holsters, knowing she would have gone straight for her shoulder holsters even if she couldn’t feel the weight of them in a gunfight, and that would have cost her precious seconds she wouldn’t have. As such, the Mafia have such a strong presence here that she wouldn’t be out of place, not with her suit nor with her guns.

The car is, just as Merlin and Arthur promised, awaiting her on the tarmac of Venice’s airport, black with sleek and shiny lines, steaming slightly in the midday heat. Nobody is there to greet her, not that she expected there someone to, and so she simply grabs the keys that had been taped to the very underside of the carriage and climbs in. The air conditioned interior makes her sigh deeply in relief, even as she impatiently brushes away the strands of hair plastered to the very back of her neck.

Tossing the files, _LAPUA_ rifle case and her jacket onto the passenger seat, she doesn’t waste a moment letting the engine turn over and listening to the car growl idly as she presses a button on the small screen embedded in the middle of the console, the golden K slowly rotating on the plain black screen.

“ _Lancelot.”_ Merlin says after a quiet beep announces that she’s been connected with HQ.

“Just for check-in, Merlin, as requested.” She says, peering out from the window as she pulls out of the airport car park. She’d have the window rolled down, but at the moment she knows she’d never be able to hear Merlin over the rush of it as she accelerates as soon as she’s out onto open roads, seeing the rolling hills skid past her peripheral.

“ _Any trouble so far?”_ Merlin asks, and she hears the gentle tinkering sounds of him messing with some sort of tech in the background, takes her eyes off of the road long enough to see him sideways on the screen, bending over what looks to be a pair of smashed and shattered glasses.

“No, touch wood but it’s been all quiet on this front.” She says, knows better to tempt it even as she taps herself on the head.  Roxy isn’t superstitious by nature, but something about the job she does has made her more than aware of that when things go wrong, they can go terribly, horribly wrong, and made her very leery of even stating it’s “quiet” when you never know if it’s true.

She and Eggsy may be some of the - if not _the_ \- youngest agents on Kingsman’s itinerary, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t already picked up a healthy amount of paranoia that could rival even the most hardened and seasoned spy at the agency, a leery combination of V-DAY, many many missions routing out and hunting down the treasonous agents thereafter, and Eggsy’s innately inborn grasp of _snitches get stitches and end up in ditches_.

She squints against the brightness of the sun, an illuminating gold that leaves the sky a brilliant blue she can’t quite believe is real. Somehow, no matter how many times she’s been abroad, seen so many countries, the beauty of some of them still take her breath away. It’s a comforting feeling, she thinks, to know she can still feel that way, that she can still get swept up in the innocent beauty of things like this, regardless of - or perhaps _in spite of -_ the dark and seedy underbelly that most of these countries tend to have cultivated.

“ _Good._ ” Merlin says, and Roxy can see him glaring down at the glasses, a frown across his face. She accelerates smoothly, feeling the deep purr of the car beneath her body as she turns left, the sound of the wheels as sweet and quiet as a metronome.

She’s checked in, and Merlin knows nothing’s going on, and seems to have no questions or concerns, but she’s reluctant to turn the console off, reluctant to erase the one link to Eggsy she can see and talk to.

“Merlin.” She says quietly, and she flexes her fingers around the leather of the steering wheel, feeling it creak beneath the movements.

“ _Ay, lass?”_ Merlin asks quietly, but he’s still got that half distracted tone and she needs him to _listen_ , because something cold is growing in her chest and she can see, in her mind’s eye, how she’d break if she can’t do this, if she can’t bring her partner _back_ -

“ _-calm down, Rox,”_ Merlin is saying, he sounds like he’s far away, almost underwater.

Despite her earlier thoughts, Roxy finds herself reaching over to shut off the console with strangely shaking fingers, the gold K taking Merlin’s place, and for all that she wanted to keep Merlin on for as long as she could, relief blooms beneath her sternum. Merlin has seen her panic before, has seen her bloodied and bruised and beaten up, but somehow, this feels far more personal and she feels fragile in ways she’s not felt for years, not since she entered Kingsman, at any rate.

Roxy has never dealt well with feeling vulnerable.

She takes a deep breath and squeezes her hands roughly around the gear stick and the steering wheel, presses her foot harder on the accelerator. This is a weakness, she knows. She knew it even before she and Eggsy got involved, as soon as she saw his face in recruitment, as they started becoming friends, as he held her by the hands in that plane and encouraged her, made her realise just who she wanted to be and just what she _could_ do, in all the moments between then and now, a mirage of memories and partnership.

Eggsy is her weak spot, and Roxy is his. It’s both something she despises and shamefully loves. To know that Eggsy would probably burn the world down for her, it’s a heedy and powerful thing, for all it makes her vulnerable.

Maybe that’s what loving Eggsy Unwin does to people, she thinks; makes them vulnerable and hopeful, even for all the suffering.

She bites her lip, tightens her grip on the leather of the steering wheel. She doesn’t need to think about this, only needs to concentrate on getting Eggsy out of the trouble he’s managed to get himself into. Roxy has never been one to lie to herself, and she doesn’t want to start now, but something about Eggsy has always made her contrary, and she hopes that Eggsy knows they _are_ coming for him.

It happens in seconds, between the beat of a heart and an inhaled breath. In one moment, she’s accelerating down the highway, the high rolling hills of Italy speeding past her and with nothing for company but her own thoughts and the pounding of blood in her head, and in the next, a sharp crack shatters against the bulletproof glass of the rear window, the car juddering for a moment before acclimatising, smoothly accelerating as Roxy pounds against pedal.

She smashes a button on the console even as she glances at the rear view mirror, seeing a single black car pursuing her, two people; a driver and a woman hanging out of the passenger window, what looks to be twin desert eagles in hand. Merlin’s face comes up on screen, and she switches the car to cruise control, winding down her window even as she unholsters one of her guns.

“I’ve got company.” She tells Merlin, who straightens immediately, something cold in his face.

“ _Put on your glasses, lass_ ,” He says to her, and Roxy does so as she ducks out the way of a barrage of bullets hits the rear window again. It doesn’t break, but there are slow moving cracks throughout the very middle that means it isn’t going to hold for very long.

Merlin remotely controls the car from UK HQ, and Roxy takes the chance to turn, aiming a shot at the wheels of the car. She curses loudly as the driver slips and skids, moving out of the way. She ducks down as the driver pulls a gun, almost taking her head off. The wing mirror is shot off and Roxy lets out an almighty curse, throwing an offended look at the other car.

“I swear to God, Eggsy,” She mutters even as she ducks back down to reload, moving smoothly with the car as Merlin turns right and then left, rolling hills blurring in her peripheral even as the sun tries it’s best to blind her. “If you aren’t alive by time I’ve got to you, I’m going to bring you back myself and make what they do to you look like child’s play.”

Through her glasses, she can barely hear Merlin through the glasses, over the sounds of gunshots and the shrieking wind, say; “ _f you perhaps could try and tone down the death threats towards Galahad and concentrate more on capturing both or at least one of the henchmen trying their best to kill you?”_ in such a dry tone that Roxy snorts.

“Of course, Merlin.” Roxy tells him even as she takes careful aim again, and she hollers loudly as the front right wheel explodes. She takes aim again, and manages to shoot the other one out, watching carefully as the car flips, once-twice-thrice; it lands roof side down and Merlin slowly decelerates.

“Do we know how they found me?” Roxy asks, even as she shoves the door open, mourning the wing mirror that the others shot off. In her ear, Merlin makes a considering sound.

“ _Not yet,”_ Merlin murmurs, and she can hear the movement in the background. _“But if they’ve been keeping an eye on the ins and outs of Italy and know what to look for in a Kingsman, they may have just tracked you down that way.”_

“Yes, I must say that the golden K embossed upon everything - _including slippers_ \- isn’t best practice at being stealthy, is it?”

Merlin doesn’t answer, but she can feel the vague sense of embarrassment coming across the line that Roxy takes that as her answer. Instead of proceeding to embarrass Merlin more, one of her many enjoyable pastimes, she checks the rounds in her guns and approaches the vehicle. She notes that the passenger’s been flung some fifty yards away, red hair sprawling like blood across the lush green field.

She’s still alive, Roxy can tell, road rash overtaking the olive complexion of her skin, several bones broken. She carefully stabs her with a sedative from her watch, watching as the woman seems to sigh and slowly relax. That taken care of, she then carefully approaches the vehicle, the driver still strapped in, but dead. At least she isn’t going to have to worry about two prisoners, this time.

Sighing, Roxy shoots the driver in the head just for insurance - she has no want nor no need for comic book resurrections; they just make her angry - before heading over to the women, hauling up her over her shoulder none too gently.

“I hate kidnapping.” She tells Merlin morosely. Merlin snorts loudly down her ear.

“ _Oh yes,”_ He says, voice suspiciously even. “ _As opposed to the other various illegal things you get into?”_

“Kidnappings are always so messy.” She grunts as she opens the boot and shoves the woman in ungently. The redhead doesn’t make a sound, even as Roxy tries her hands together at the back of her, and then her ankles with white zip ties. If she remembers right, Eggsy once compaigned to Arthur for people to use yellow zip ties, Arthur had said _no_ , thank the Lord. Roxy ties a gag around the unconscious woman’s mouth and, after that, fixes a spare tie over her eyes as a makeshift blind just in case. Then, just for good luck, shoots her full of another sedative, taking care not to overdose her unduly.

“ _And shooting people isn’t?”_ Merlin says dryly as Roxy shuts the boot heavily, clambering into the drivers seat again.

“Of course it can be,” Roxy tells him, offended. She starts up the engines even as she then says; “But shooting people is always that much more fun.”

“ _Good lord,”_ Roxy hears Merlin mutter, she thinks she perhaps wasn't supposed to hear it. “ _We’ve created a monster_.”

“Galahad is just as bad.” She points out cheerfully and hears the familiar thump-groan that always proceeds Merlin hitting his forehead off of his desk.

“ _Don’t remind me_.” Merlin growls. Roxy laughs, accelerating smoothly and hearing the thump of the woman in the boot, the crash of the other car now only a small speck in her rear view mirror.

God, she can’t wait to get out of here. It’s too warm and she’s missing Eggsy; he’s going to owe her for _lifetimes_ after this.

 

It takes five long hours to get to Naples by driving, with her having to stop three times to make sure that the unconscious woman that she’s kidnapped and kept in the boot of her car actually _stays_ unconscious. Thankfully, she’s still out of it, and Roxy has only had to tranquillise her once.

Still, despite the fact that it’s been relatively quiet, even after having to shake a potential tail two hours in to the five hour drive, and having to skirt around four separate police cars, Roxy’s never been more glad to see a safe house in her life. Her arse is _sore_.

Pulling into the driveway and then garage of a squat little cottage just on the very outskirts of the bustling city of Naples, she sighs and tips her head back. She’s sweating and aching, feeling the aftermath of the gunfight she’d been party in. She’d found a squashed bullet hidden in the folds of her shirt by her left abdomen, suddenly realising why that had been the cause of her aching. She _hates_ getting shot in the abdomen.

She looks at her watch; she’s got another four and a half hours before she needs to check in with UK HQ again, and she’s got to file her report on the gunfight. That should be enough time to get herself settled in and to start the interrogation on the red headed woman; even if she didn’t get any information on her partner, she could get some information on the Camorra, which was her secondary objective. Still, she’s looking forward to being able to let off some energy. Having to sit still in a car for five hours after an unexpected gunfight whilst still high on the adrenaline is _not_ Roxy’s idea of a good time.

“Well,” Roxy mutters to herself. “Nothing else for it.”

She grabs the files and the _LAPUA_ rifle cases alongside her dufflebag from the passenger seat, letting the drivers side door swing open. She grimaces as she steps out from the car, feeling the oppressive heat of Italy settle against her skin; she’d been spoilt in the car with good air conditioning and the wind blowing through the rolled down window. Now that she’s in the heat of it, it’s overbearing, and she can already feel sweat slicking down the middle of her back, sticking her hair to her nape and forehead.

“I hate Italy,” She grumbles beneath her breath as she locks the car, hearing the beep and making sure that the boot is fully closed. It’d be just her luck to turn around and the damn woman to run off because she hadn’t thought to check the lock mechanism on the boot. Merlin would never let her live it down. “Why couldn’t he have been kidnapped in a cooler country?”

She finds the key to the cottage stuck to the garage door, rolling her eyes at the hiding place. It would serve them right if the place got robbed or something, she thought. Leaving a key in such an open place was stupid to an almost unfathomable degree.

Still, the door swings open, and she’s at the ready with her gun, just in case. However, after doing a quick and thorough sweep of the place, it’s quiet if a little dusty. She dumps her stuff in the bedroom; the cottage only as one master bedroom, a little back bedroom that doesn’t have a window, a small toilet and a kitchen that opens up into the living room, and she’s glad that it’s only tiny; she _loathes_ cleaning, especially when it comes to blood stains.

She makes sure to double back to the small back bedroom, stacking some equipment there ready for the woman’s interrogation, shoving a metal chair from the kitchen into the middle of the empty room. Roxy gets the feeling that this room is used for a lot of this kind of stuff and has to stifle an appropriate giggle. Doing a few quick adjustments makes sure that the chair is bolted down to the floor and that there’s nothing that the woman could easily grab even when she _was_ tied to the chair. Roxy’s kidnapped enough people to know how this could go.

After, she doubles back to the car, thumbing it open and shoving the boot open. The woman’s still unconscious and Roxy sighs.

“Typical,” She mutters beneath her breath. “Well, at least I’m getting my daily exercise.”

She manages to manoeuvre the woman so she can lift her into a fireman's carry, internally grateful that the woman isn’t too heavy. For all that the woman was quite tall, about Merlin’s height, if Roxy had to guess, she was slender and lithe.

Locking the car again, she staggers into the cottage, not even wincing when she accidentally hits the woman’s head off the door jam of the front door; occupational hazard with kidnapping people, really.

Roxy dumps her non that gently into the metal chair in the back bedroom, rearranging her that her ankles are zip tied to each front leg of the chair, and that her wrists are zip tied to the top of the back chair legs because there’s no chair arms. She ties rope around the woman’s torso, keeping it tight with very little slack and makes sure that there’s no give to any of the zip ties.

It’s only as she’s taking off the woman’s blindfold that she starts stirring, still groggy from the sedative. Roxy crouches in front of her, hands lying deceptively on her thighs.

“Hello, love,” She says, and the woman startles, taken aback. _Obviously not professional_ , Roxy thinks, _or not used to be the kidnappee, rather than the kidnapper_. “Now, you’re gonna tell me everything you know about the Camorra, alright?”

The woman makes a strangled said behind her gag and Roxy gives a slow, sharkish grin.

_she disquiets me / seduces and disturbs me_

_attracts and frightens me away_

— **Guy de Maupassant,**   _Yvette_ , from “Yvette, & Other Stories


End file.
